


extra limbs

by fairbanks



Series: goretober 2018 [1]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Body Horror, Gen, Goretober 2018, Grief, and rotting person body horror, well ghost body horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-01
Updated: 2018-10-01
Packaged: 2019-07-24 18:00:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16180298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fairbanks/pseuds/fairbanks
Summary: The ghosts followed Melanie home.





	extra limbs

  1. **extra limbs**



 

She’s learning to ignore them.

 

It’s a process in steps, like grief. First

 

“This isn’t real, this isn’t happening, it can’t be happening,” Melanie sucks in each breath, one after the other. A puddle of flesh pools in her kitchen, inside it arms and legs and screaming mouths. Clawing, bleeding out and bleeding together gunshots that are only in her ears. She covers those traitorous ears of hers, ignores the mug she dropped and the coffee leaking from it, into her cheerful pajama pants. Kneeling behind the counter is real, the cold of the tile is real, he home is real. The remnants of an impossible she left behind are not.

 

“You’re dreaming,” she tells herself in a whisper. The hands from the ghostly mass scratch scratch scratch the cheap tile. “You’re asleep, you’ll wake up, you left them behind, please, god please.”

 

then

 

Melanie throws the kettle as hard as she can against the wall, against patch of flesh like wall paper against it, arms and legs and empty guns. “Fuck  _ you _ ,” she shrieks, picks up a tea cup she knows is Martin’s favorite and  _ doesn’t care. _

 

It smashes against the flesh, cracks and shatters like it hit a hard surface. It did, of course, because these were ghosts. These were never real in a solid sense, shouldn’t  _ be _ here yet they followed her. They reach, violent beckoning, and she screams muffled rage into her hands. Get out, get out, leave me alone, leave me the  _ fuck _ alone, I won’t-

 

When Martin finds her they’re already gone. Maybe they never were. She leaves before he can offer to make her tea with a dented kettle.

 

then 

 

The idea makes her sick as she hovers in the hall to Elias’ office.

 

Jon is useless, Jon will want  _ statements _ and is far too caught up in his own ridiculous hauntings to be of any help. Basira can’t rationalize away a monster, Daisy can’t shoot a ghost, Tim can’t mope anything out of existence and Martin won’t banish it with a cup of tea. They’re useless. They can’t help her.

 

Elias probably could. The hard fact of it makes her skin itch.

 

She paces, considers, looks in shadows for a the soup of body parts that popped up at odd times, ghastly fungi growing on the walls. They didn’t show up when she wasn’t alone but being around people puts her teeth on edge these days. The bullet scar on her leg hurts and she thinks  _ Look, I need your- your advice. Your something. Just make them go away, just do something instead of sitting around like a smug asshole, just- just  _ **_help me_ ** _ or I’ll- I’ll hurt you. I’ll hurt you I swear it help me, help me. _

 

Melanie never knocks on the door.

 

then 

 

When they show up by her bed Melanie doesn’t move. She closes her eyes, smells rot and bile and blood, old blood like the train car. The hands reach for her, broken fingernails on transparent hands. They reach but can’t reach her, and she watches them. She’s so tired. She’s so, so tired.

 

Behind her eye lid her dad’s skin melts in yellow. She’s little and he wraps a blanket around her shaking shoulders.  _ C’mon lass, I won’t let ‘em get you,  _ he tells her, pats the muscle on his arm until she sniffles and laughs. He goes to make them hot chocolate, the cheap kind from little paper bags they can’t always afford. His flesh drips into it as he leans over the mug, stirring and stirring with putrid fingers.

 

A blink and her eyes blur, lazy tears she can’t bother wiping away. The ghostly hands reach and she thinks about reaching back, imagines them wiping her tears away like he would. They’d gauge out her eyes.

 

She falls asleep imagining doing the same to Elias, to Jon, to Amherst and her old filming crew and Tim as whines and Martin with his irritating pity and-

 

finally to

 

The long hallway out of her apartment drips with flesh. Melanie walks down it, ignores the wailing mouths and bulging eyes and so many people, so many pieces, melded together to encase her in a tunnel of parts. They graze her but cannot touch, cannot reach, and she pays them no mind. 

 

She goes to work, she reads statements, she watches Jon and Martin and Basira plan and cast heavy eyes at her. Poor girl, they think. She’s so angry it plateaus into a brittle peace.  


End file.
